


all standing

by emAvox



Series: Watcher Yenalla [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Backstory, Character building, Dissociation, Mentions of Rape, Moon Godlike Watcher, Prostitution, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, basically the backstory of my watcher who was a slave on a pirate ship along the deadfire coast, deadname, she's kickass and my daughter and i love her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 17:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emAvox/pseuds/emAvox
Summary: To be the only woman on a pirate ship in the middle of the seas was at times a fate worse than death.





	all standing

**Author's Note:**

> i hardcore binged PoE for a few days straight, wrote this, and then basically abandoned the game so... enjoy!

**_All standing_ **

_Bringing a person or thing up short, that is an unforeseen and sudden stop._

  


For as long as she could remember there had been a boat under her feet and chains around her wrists ( _the collar had come later_ ). She had never known the story of how she came to be on the Ravisher as it prowled the seas in search of plunder, and she had never asked. As a slave on a boat in the middle of nothing it was best to speak quietly, and better not to speak at all.

 

“Even on a ship of cats,” her old friend Deirdan used to say, “a mouse can survive as long as it is quieter than the rest.”

 

A good man, Deirdan, a _kind_ man. Their ears had shared the same point, and he had once used his water ration to clean the whip wounds on her back. He’d been gutted like a fish and tossed overboard two years before the end for fainting in the captain’s path.

 

“It’s a waste of resources, sir.” The first mate Lexle had argued hesitantly. She and the others had continued their work, eyes fixed forward. That had been before her body betrayed her, showing the beginnings of curves that would catch a man’s eye. She had worked the deck, then, with Deirdan and his son Moed. 

 

The captain had scoffed, and spit into Moed’s hair. The boy hadn’t flinched, though the rigging he had been tasked with adjusting burned his palms. “He’s old, and all gristle. _He’s_ a waste if anythin’.”

 

Overboard he had gone. Moed hadn’t spoken for months after.

 

*****

 

When she was smaller she had been a jack-of-all-trades. She had been a kitchen aid and a deckhand and, at times, a night light. Once she had been tied to the bowsprit as punishment for making eye contact with a sailor; the dull glow of her birthmarks had also signalled an allied ship for a planned meeting. Two birds, one girl.

 

*****

 

She was a curiosity to some, and a good luck charm to most. Others thought that she brought bad luck, and blamed her for anything that befell them while at sea. Despite it all she was an exotic wonder; at night, when the men fucked into her without abandon, those who believed in her connection to Ondra would touch her moon marks with reverence. In the day they would speak while at work about the way that her halo would shimmer in the air around her head, would cast shadows on her mauve skin in the dark. _She is_ , they would say, _godlike_.

 

 _And_ , others would reply with a laugh, _we never have to hear her bitch_.

 

To be the only woman on a pirate ship in the middle of the seas was at times a fate worse than death.

 

*****

 

The crew would change from time to time. Men would die on raids, or would be killed for disloyalty, or would be removed if they lost the captain’s favor. Other than the captain and the first mate, the man who stayed on the ship the longest was Sidenka. For years he was a terror of the seas; they called him Sidenka Fire-Brand, an aumaua with an affinity for all of the elements. His favorite, of course, had been fire. He would posture as kindly during the day, but on that night, with her---

 

“Scream,” he had said. He had been watching her for years and yet had made no move to take her before, until that night. His teeth had shone in the darkness, reflecting the light emanating from beneath her skin. “Scream and I’ll burn you to ashes.”

 

His hand had lit up with blue flame and the cast shadows painted him monstrous, revealing his true self as the daylight never could. His flaming fingers had wrapped around the chain that connected her shackles, heating the metal to a flaming red that spread until it reached the shackles themselves. The smell of burning flesh and the sound of Sidenka, who laughed and moaned loudly, had brought the captain.

 

The man ( _only she knew his name, he had whispered it to her in the darkness many times and demanded that she repeat it_ ) had wrenched the wizard back by the scruff of his neck, fuming.

 

“She is not to be harmed!” the captain had shouted, shaking the aumaua and tossing him to the floor. Turning to her, still on the bed, he had attempted to grab her chains only to wrench his hand back with a swear. The metal glowed in the dark.

 

“Lexle!” the captain shouted, and the orlan appeared from thin air. “His head on the bowsprit!”

 

That had been the end of Fire-Brand, and there had been no Deirdan to wash the brands around her wrists.

 

*****

 

She was something like a kept bird, and for this the other slaves hated her. Under the captain’s orders she was not to be harmed; towards the end she was most often perched on a soft pillow in his quarters. She was placed there for hours on end, the cloth doing nothing to cushion her knees, until the man swept in again. Some days he had been half-undressed by the time he had crossed the room to her, and others he had merely run a soft hand over her head and down her shoulders ( _a prize, a pet_ ). He kept her naked at all times for whenever his hunger awakened, bare except for the golden chains that wrapped around her neck and throat.

 

While there was little time or allowance for speech between other slaves, she had seen the hatred in their eyes when she was allowed escorted walks on the decks. One wrong move and they would be killed; she was allowed to sleep at the end of the captain’s bed.

 

She had never blamed the others for how they felt, had never been hurt by this. In those days especially she had felt very little, only took things as they came to her and watched them pass as the ocean passes a ship.

 

“My little doll,” the captain would croon in the night. “Say my name.”

 

As the bedframe shook, her flat voice would whisper out of her with no inflection. She would breathe his name, a sigh how he liked, but she wasn’t really there. Locked behind her eyes she watched the world around her and saw it as a different world happening to a different woman.

 

He would grab a fistful of her hair when he finished, every time, and moan a name. That name wasn’t her, though. Never had been.

 

*****

 

She had been awake when the ship lurched, that last night on the sea, staring up into the semi-darkness as the captain had slumbered on top of her after a long night. The sea had been gentle, its waves soft after a lifetime of hearing their music, and the men on deck had grown quiet after a night of drinking themselves into oblivion. Then, with no warning, she had been thrown from the bed with the captain as the ship met resistance from the sea floor. She had known, even as her face slammed into the floor, that they had hit a reef, that the men on duty had truly drunk themselves to death in the end. Shouts of alarm had risen from the lower level of the ship as water rushed in, faster than the bilge could compensate for.

 

She did not bother to rise from the floor but waited patiently for the captain to rouse himself and get to his feet. Once up, he had violently pulled a pair of trousers up and girded them tightly before bursting out of his quarters, shouting for Lexle. She finally sat up when the ship groaned and shuddered, beginning a slow tilt to the left. She could see it in her mind’s eye, the flooding lower levels ( _the slaves would drown first, closest to the bottom of the hold, then the sailors_ ).

 

Lexle’s voice called out for her, but she didn’t respond. She had no voice and no name to respond to. Best to let Ondra take her back, a child of the sea and the moon returning from whence it came. She had felt a sudden yearning to see the ocean before the ship sank, and so she had climbed to her feet and walked unsteadily out of the room to stand beneath the sky. She had a moment to watch the edges of the sun begin to light upon the water, the shine of its rays making the beach ahead shine; she ignored the bodies.

 

She heard Lexle call out for her again as the wood groaned beneath her feet and continued its descent into the abyss. Finally, the orlan stumbled into her and grabbed her chains. She planted her feet even as his own scrabbled in an attempt to pull her away from her place of vigil.

 

“We have to go!” he shouted, eyes wild as the ship fell to pieces around them. “ _Now!_ ”

 

She wanted to stay where she was, wanted to be reclaimed by the ocean and set free from this existence that she had found herself forced into. She wanted to see if her moon marks would be beautiful underwater as her chains dragged her into the depths. Maybe she would see Deirdan there, buried in the silt and the coral, the only good man that she had ever known.

 

Instead, her legs followed the orlan. A lifetime of obeying orders had made it nearly impossible for her to ignore one. Her mind was in a haze as the man led her to the edge of the ship- right up until he pushed her over.

 

Her poetics about the peace that death would bring her vanished the instant she hit the water. Some animal instinct within her fought to breach the surface of the water, choking down air loudly and quickly before she was submerged again. As much as she wanted to die, her heart demanded a life of her, and the rush of blood in her ears said as much: _live, live, live_.

 

Between the weighted chains and the ocean, hungry for another soul, making her way to the beach was nearly the death of her. In the end, she had managed to pull herself onto the sand, body weak, and she coughed up what seemed to be half of the ocean. The beach was silent, with only the familiar sound of surf breaking on rocks; bodies had washed up on the beach from the depths of the ship but none were alive. None but her.

 

As she rolled over onto her back, still coughing, she realized with a shiver that her wet skin was bare to the wind. The captain had fucked her all night, right up until the end almost, and she was still naked with nothing to cover herself. She peered in the semi-darkness at the body next to her and realized with regret that it was Lexle. His clothes were soaked from the water and in his hand was a ring of keys. After staring for moments on end, she slowly realized that the smallest key on the ring belonged to her shackles and collar.

 

The sun continued to rise in the distance, waking up the world, a new world with her in it, alive. The tallest mast on the Ravisher sank slowly in the distance, a ripped portion of the sail waving in the rough wind as if saying farewell.

 

 _Where would I go?_ She had thought to herself. _I have nowhere and nothing and I am no one._

 

Once more, her brain decided for her against her will. _Get up_ , it said softly. _Get free, get clothes, get along._

 

And so she did.

 

*****

 

She had fucked her way from the islands to the mainland aimlessly, only moving on when men’s hands started grasping her a bit too tightly or when brothel owners started scowling in her direction. For the first time in her life she had _things_ and _money_. She had a flask that had been gifted to her by a drunk which she’d filled with sea water for Ondra. She had clothes that she had traded favors for, and a grimoire that she had taken off of a dead man to pawn (she had kept it when the shopkeep had spit at her feet and called her a whore). An aumaua man who had looked nothing like Sidenka had spent an evening with her and had taught her a touch of magic. An elven woman on the mainland had asked if she didn’t get tired of being a cheap fuck.

 

 _Yes_ , she had thought viciously, so seethingly angry that she had surprised herself. It was as if in that moment her heart had burst out of her chest, loudly echoing in her ribcage its own siren song that came with being alive.

 

“Why don’t you leave with that caravan?” a brothel owner had shouted in her face, days before she did exactly that. “Folks in Dyrwood might need sluts, but we’ve got plenty of ‘em here!”

 

Before the week had ended, she had found a caravan heading that way, bound for Gilded Vale. Odema, the caravan master, had looked her over; she could only imagine what he saw, a godlike with burns and scars, grimoire and all.

 

“Well,” he had said. “Your coin’s fine.”

 

She had nodded.

 

“We’ll leave at first light.” He had said.

 

She had nodded again.

 

Odema had stared up at her, light suspicion in his eyes. “You got a voice, kid? Or a name?”

 

Here she had stopped short. She had had a name before, on the Ravisher, but it wasn’t her own. No one had given her one since, and no one had asked. She was free now, and free folk had names and lives and loves. It was time to start collecting those.

 

“Yes,” she had said, her voice like the breeze. The man had leaned forward a bit to catch it. Here was a beginning, a life that stretched from this point onward toward the horizon with no end in sight. Here was a _choice_ , one that only she could make and one only for herself. The land was beneath her feet, the sea with its dead slavers lay far behind her, and her chains had fallen somewhere in between.

 

Her lips quivered before the corners of her mouth shifted to reveal the barest hint of a smile.

 

“My name,” she said at the beginning of her life, “is Yenalla.”


End file.
